


For all the Blood my People spilled (Your Kind will have to Pay)

by bendylouis, thatissoprofound



Category: One Direction (Band), One Direction/X-Men Crossover, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Blood, But No Actual Suicide, Death, Depression, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Minor Character Death, Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, Violence, X-Men AU - Freeform, but not as much as you'd probably like there to be, don't repeat in front of your parents kids, larry - Freeform, lots and lots of foul language, probably more than you'd like there to be, this shit is really fucked up, ziam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:06:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6942880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendylouis/pseuds/bendylouis, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatissoprofound/pseuds/thatissoprofound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was funny, really, because any of them could die right this second but they were all having lunch, laughing with their friends and family like immortality was on their side.</p><p>-</p><p>When an increasing amount of Mutants go rogue in the UK the fate of humanity may lie in the hands of the people threatening to destroy it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Part 1**  
**The Ants**

 

 

The restaurant was crowded as it always was at lunch time, especially on a Saturday. Loud Jazz Music was buzzing from the Speakers in the corner and the overwhelming smell of pizza was wafting through the air. Somewhere in the back a baby was crying and its mother frantically tried to make it stop by singing a loud, off key version of Over The Rainbow.

Humans were funny like that.

Niall watched the woman with amusement sparkling in his eyes as he chewed on his chicken. It was spicy, but not too spicy, and just perfectly complementary with his large portion of creamy mash.

Niall loved his mash.

He kept his eyes on the woman and her baby, laughing to himself as the baby spewed up creamy white liquid over the mother's dress. “Oh no,” someone – maybe her husband – said in between his laughter, and then she stood up with an exhausted sigh and carried the baby to the bathroom where she vanished behind a large wooden door.

“Can I get you anything else, Sir?”

Niall looked up at the young waiter in his black waistcoat and the ill fitting dark red apron that was tied around his waist. The restaurant's name was inked into the front of it in large, black, bold letters, like it was screaming for people to remember it.

“I'm fine,” Niall said with a nod and a wide grin on his face. The waiter only nodded before walking away so Niall could go back to his favourite pass time; Watching humans interact.

They were funny, in a way. So painfully ignorant and even more painfully arrogant.

They thought they were the wisest, the most inventive, the strongest, the best at everything, when in reality they were mere ants under the soles of millions of shoes on the feet of the ones who were truly superior.

It was funny, really, because any of them could die right this second but they were all having lunch, laughing with their friends and family like immortality was on their side.

Niall had never quite understood why humans tended to act like they weren't fully aware of their finite lifespan and the high probability of imminent death. They should be cowering in their rooms in fear, should avoid talking to anybody because anybody could be a superior enemy.

Even the news warned of an increase in violent deaths over the past month in the UK, and London specifically, and yet here they were – small, stupid, arrogant – and acted like it couldn't affect them, like the random explosions on the TV couldn't be happening in their neighbourhood, and the victims of strangulation on the front page of today's Daily Mail couldn't possibly be their kids or even themselves.

“I heard they locked some of them away”

Niall was pulled from his thoughts when a male voice spoke up right next to him, where two guys around his age had just been seated. One of them was holding up a copy of the Sun and waving it at his friend, and the other mumbled an unflattering opinion into his opened menu.

“What was that?” The first guy – ginger, blue eyes, and pouring some milk into his coffee – asked, eyebrows raised.

His friend just shrugged his broad shoulders and leaned back, putting off answering by giving their waiter his order; Meatloaf and mash. A winning combination, in Niall's humble opinion.

“They won't get to keep them in, will they?” he finally answered and slapped the newspaper out of his friend's grip. It landed on the table with a loud slap that made a woman nearby flinch in surprise. “Some of them walk through walls, they do. Some of them control minds, and then what? You're telling me they'll get locked up and just because some twat in a uniform tells 'em to behave they won't take advantage of their powers?”

The ginger guy frowned as he took a sip of his coffee. “I'm sure they got ways to keep them in,” he said as he eyed Niall's half empty plate for a moment as if to contemplate whether he should have gotten the same thing instead of the Caesar's Salad he'd ordered. “They're not stupid, Billy, they wouldn't be locking them up if they couldn't keep 'em in”

Billy didn't seem too convinced, but he was distracted by the arrival of their food, so instead of answering he took an eager mouthful of his meatloaf and mash and hummed around the pleasant taste. “'f you ask me,” he said between one bite and the next, only swallowing after spewing little pieces of meatloaf across the table. “Only way to keep them from causing any harm is to kill 'em off. They're better off dead. We're better off when they're dead”

The other guy made a sound like he didn't entirely agree but wasn't sure if he was allowed to object. “I'm sure they're not all bad,” he said and shrugged his shoulders. Niall found himself thinking that this guy seemed to be aware that he was only an ant. He was small and insignificant, and it was only a matter of time until someone stepped on him without even noticing.

“Who cares?” Billy said, voice loud as he laughed without any trace of humour in it. “They all got the ability to be, so I say kill 'em off. Them and their off springs. Anything that shows the slightest trace of abnormality should be slaughtered like a pig. Scum like that deserves - ”

Neither Niall nor Billy's friend would ever know what Scum like that deserved or didn't deserve, because in that moment Billy started choking, maybe on his food or something else, but at least it stopped him from talking.

Niall sighed in relief.

Billy was going red in the face, his blue eyes watering with the need for air, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked in a breath that didn't seem to reach his lungs.

“Billy!” his friend said loudly and scooted closer to slap Billy's back, panic causing him to pale like a ghost. “Calm down, Bill, just breathe!”

But Billy couldn't. Saliva was dripping from the corners of his mouth, his eyes had become wide and bloodshot, his hands were trembling where he was holding onto the edge of the table. His nails were leaving marks on the wood like he was trying to carve the air out of it.

Niall stared down at his bill and hummed as he rummaged through his wallet for enough money.

Billy started coughing, his arms flailing about helplessly as his friend yelled for a doctor, for help, for anything. Something white, like milk, dribbled from his mouth and onto the pretty dark red table cloth, and it started to foam the more he tried to catch his breath. By now his face had a blueish tint and his body seemed to contort more and more each second.

Billy collapsed on the table just as Niall had put twenty pounds next to his empty plate, his face landing right in the remains of his mash.

What a waste, really.

Niall put on his jacket as medics rushed through the door and people crowded around to document the spectacle with their phone cameras.

Funny, those humans.

Billy's friend was sobbing, looking around like he was lost and desperately trying to wake up from a nightmare. When his eyes met Niall's, Niall flashed him a smile and gave him a friendly wave before making his way to the exit, humming a happy tune to himself.

This, right there, was why humans were supposed to hide in their homes; Because there were some pretty big shoes out there that had no concerns about stepping on some ants on their way.


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

And the bell rang again.

Meaning that the poor souls that had missed it the first time, now had no chance of pretending that they hadn’t heard it. Still, none of the people around him really made any effort of moving towards their classroom. Some of them could probably get there instantly, Louis knew of one kid who could walk through walls. He had witnessed it first hand. He got quite a shock seeing her appear from within a bookshelf to skip ahead of him in the queue in the cafeteria.

None of these kids had any trouble getting to class in time, even if it meant flying through the hallways. Except Louis, of course. The only thing he could do was kill his headteacher to clear any evidence of his tardiness. He was glad his power could be put to some use.

He pulled his locker open, using a tad too much force, causing the door to slam into the locker next to his, leaving a dent in the metal. Surely there was someone around that could sort that out tomorrow.

That was the thing though, wasn’t it? All these kids had powers that could be put to good use - well apart from that one girl that could make bubbles appear by snapping her fingers, and it wasn’t even the cool kind of bubbles that you could trap people in, just the good old boring bubbles that you created in your garden by mixing soap and water. There was a boy in form five who could make any material bendable, or that girl in form nine who could make people fall into a temporary sleep by touching them. Not a permanent sleep, she wasn’t that unfortunate. There was also a boy who came to the Academy just a couple of weeks ago who had some kind of super hearing. He heard everything, no matter if the people talking were on the other side of the school. He heard them. All the time. Louis found it bad enough to have to listen to people talking as they walked past him in the hallway. He didn’t even want to think about how it would be to have to hear what was on everyone’s mind, all the time.

“It is not that bad, really.”

Louis looked up from his locker, but saw no one around him that looked like they paid attention to anything but getting to class, reminding him that he should get a move on unless he wanted to be late again. He wasn’t sure he could take another round of discouraging comments from a teacher that seemed to have no trouble being clad head-to-toe in blue scales.

“I think she referred to them as turqoise at some point, but I think you are right.”

Louis slammed his locker shut. Before him stood a boy he had only seen in passing before.

“They do look blue.”

The boy grinned as he adjusted the books he was carrying in his arms, his brown curls falling across happily sparkling emerald eyes.

Louis hated him already.

“Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say,” the boy pointed out, a frown creasing his forehead. “I was just trying to be friendly.”

The hallway was empty now. Apart from the pair of them.

“I have to get to class,” Louis said. He had no idea why he felt like he had to explain himself to this kid.

“I still think it is nice of you to let me know,” the boy smiled to the ground and shrugged slightly. Nice. Not really the word Louis would use to describe himself.

He could see the kid open his mouth again to speak, but Louis turned on the spot before a word had escaped his lips. Blue scales or not, the History headteacher would not care about any possible excuses he could conjure up if he arrived late to class.

He did arrive late to class.

“It was -”

The room went silent as Louis sneaked through the door. “Sorry,” he muttered upon entering.

“Mr. Tomlinson, I am glad you could grace us with your presence. Sit.”

If she wore clothes, Louis was sure her knickers would be in a twist.

“As I said before we were unfairly disturbed; it was during these years that most mutants arrived at the Academy, simply because of the threats of the outside world.”

Louis looked up at his teacher as he sat down at the far back of the classroom. Surely there must be something more interesting for her to do than try to teach them how, when and why things happened. It all had the same outcome didn’t it? Everybody died in the end, regardless of whether they were mutants or not. Why should you talk about them as if though they were two completely different species.

Looking around the room at the students in his class, the primary thing Louis saw was not mutants. He saw people of different ages, in varying stages of fatigue from having to listen to a pile of scales talk. He saw a girl creating small puffs of smoke by snapping her fingers to impress the boy in front of her with grass green hair. He saw a boy he knew had issues sleeping because he kept waking up from hitting the bunk bed above him as he started levitating. He saw two boys playing Hanging Man on a piece of paper, taking turns guessing letters, as a third boy, in front of them chuckled under his breath and shook his head as another body part was added to the man hanging. These kids were not essentially mutants. Surely, they had powers but they were normal. Well fairly normal. Fairly normal kids with fairly normal lives.

Not like Louis, who was nowhere close to normal, with a life as far from normal as one could get.

Once the bell finally rang the end of the lesson Louis was the first person out of the classroom. Or well, he was the first person out of the room without cheating; like a certain person with teleporting powers did.

It didn't matter, though, because as soon as Louis stepped outside his classroom, a horde of teenage and young adult mutants were storming out into the hallway as well, effectively pushing Louis against the lockers on their way to lunch, without actually touching him.

All he had to do now was get through the after-lunch lessons and then he could go back to his room and try to desperately learn the unimportant dates he’d gotten in history, or maybe he’d manage to convince Liam to stay up late and play Fifa with him again. Either or. It wasn’t as if he had any prior obligations he had to attend.

“I’d be up for hanging out.”

Had he not talked, Louis would have walked straight into him.

“That is if you have no plans, I mean.”

The curly haired boy from earlier was still wearing his stupid grin. Surely it must be tiring to smile constantly.

“I do have plans,” Louis said as he sidestepped to continue down the hall, avoiding the very green eyes that followed his every move. The quicker he got out of there, the quicker he could continue his task of wallowing in self-pity.

“You know,” the boy said, looking at his feet as he stepped into Louis’ space, “I get that keeping an unbothered appearance is important but - “

“Don’t talk about me like you know me,” Louis snapped and shouldered the kid out of the way.

“All I am saying is that you don’t have to -”

“What you need to do is stay the fuck out of my head, okay?” Louis called back as he zig-zagged through the students, desperate to put distance between them. Fucking twat.

“Please don’t smile so brightly, I have had enough of that for one day,” Louis moaned as he sat down on the bench by the Academy’s football pitch.

“Can’t have been that bad, you said ‘please’,” the boy next to him said, his eyes focused on his lap.

“That could change very quickly, Niall,” he said as he watched how Niall expertly worked his magic on a Rubic’s Cube. Or, that is what Louis expected it to be - but it was moving too quickly for the colours to show properly. “Shouldn’t you have learnt to solve those already,” Louis complained.

“12 sided - and you said?” Niall grinned, holding up the solved cube for Louis to see.

“Pathetic,” Louis said, zipping his bag open to get a football out.

“You are just jealous cause you can’t solve a four by four one,” Niall said before he disappeared.

He did not literally disappear.

Two seconds later he was on the other side of the football pitch, a ball in his hands. Louis looked down onto his lap to see that the ball he had been holding and the ball Niall had were the very same ball.

“Show off,” Louis muttered as he stood up to jog over to where Niall was. As he reached him the blonde was on his 319th push up - the ball was lying in front of him on the ground.

He knew that Niall was ridiculously quick. He also liked trying to beat Niall to it when his friend least expected it. Even if it meant outwitting him. What better time was there than when Niall reached push-up 1,093? Throwing himself onto the ball, Louis let out a victorious shout. Yes he was mentally five years old sometimes. “Hah, I got it - you’re too slow!”

“Huh?” Niall smiled, looking to a spot next to him on the grass. Louis knew it before he took his eyes off Niall. A ball was on the grass; the black and white patches mocking Louis.

“Wait - what?” As he got up, the ball was, as he expected, not there. “You need to stop that. You are going to end up not having any friends if you keep it up,” Louis sulked.

At that Niall threw his head back and laughed. A proper belly laugh. His blue eyes were still glistening when he later looked at Louis. Throwing the ball at his friend, Niall nodded towards the far end of the pitch. Challenge was in his eyes. “Go ahead, I’m giving you a head start.”

“Always the gentleman,” Louis mocked but took off none the less, hardly reaching across half the pitch before Niall was on his heels, his quick feet doing their best at snatching the ball from Louis’ feet without tripping him over.

There is only so long you find kicking a ball around with an abnormally quick person fun. Although, Louis always found himself impressed with his effort. He usually half expected himself to give up halfway through because the circumstances were unfair. Yet, Niall always managed to make it fun by just being himself. Careless Niall. Joyful Niall. Niall who liked Louis for who he was, rather than not liking him for what he could do.

They found themselves on the grass after Louis gave up on trying to get Niall to teach him a specifically hard move. Sure, the kid was quicker than lightning, but that did not make him a good teacher. He just completed the move over and over, expecting Louis to see what he was doing, when in fact all that happened according to Louis’ eyes was the ball moving from one spot to another.

“For being so slow you really are not a sore loser,” Niall chuckled as he accepted the Rubik’s Cube from Louis. Louis had done his best at twisting the sides as many times in different directions as possible. Niall would have a hard time with this one.

“I’ve had practice with you,” Louis admitted, thinking about the first time he had played football with Niall. It had been one of his less proud moments.

“Might also have something to do with the fact that you have accepted that you are never going to win?” Niall suggested.

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

“I thought you’d need it since you were so extraordinarily chirpy this morning.”

Niall handed him the cube again. Solved.

“Please don’t remind me,” Louis moaned as he turned the sides of the cubes once again, making sure to keep it from Niall’s line of vision. Surely he was cheating. “I have had the worst of mornings and I would rather just put it all behind me and pretend it never happened.”

“That bad?” Niall asked as he accepted the cube again, giving it a look over before starting.

“Not only did I have to spend a double History period listening to Mrs. Turquoise-Not-Blue raging on about reformation and rebellions; I also bumped into Mr. Obnoxious twice. Also I heard today’s lunch is anchovy stew. Yes that bad.” Louis lay down on the grass, squinting in the sunlight. For being December it really wasn’t that cold.

“Oh Mr. Obnoxious sounds charming?”

“He is fucking horrendous. Constantly smiling - “

“Sounds awful,” Niall muttered, his eyes never leaving the cube.

“The bloody audacity of getting into my head - I don’t know, reading my mind. Like he had any right to do that, like - “

“So you met Harry?” Niall smiled at the cube. Louis sat up and stared at his friend.

“Harry?”

“Yeah, my mate, Harry. Curly brown hair, says random things? Dimples?”

“You have got to be kidding me?” Surely Niall wasn’t hanging out with this kid by his own choice? He wouldn’t sit down and let this Harry pick through his brain, following his every trail of thought. Would he?

“I do have other friends than you. You know that, right?” Niall handed the solved cube back to Louis.

“I guess I just thought you had better taste,” Louis mumbled as he tossed the toy over his shoulder. “I hereby ban those from my presence.”

“Just as well. I was getting bored anyway,” Niall said as he stood up, reaching out a hand for Louis to grab. “Also we don’t want to be late for lunch.”

Louis frowned at him as he was pulled up.

“I think most of your bad mood comes from an empty stomach,” Niall said as they started walking back to the Academy. “Besides you seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot with Harry.”

“What does Harry have to do with it?” Louis quickly questioned as they closed in on the main building and the cafeteria. He didn’t have to wait for an answer though; Harry was waiting for them by the entrance.


	3. Chapter 3

Liam had been at the Academy for the past eight years and still he was struggling with the most basic topics in his Science class.

He hadn’t really taken a long time to get his power under control unlike most of the people here had - there was only so much to growing claws from your hands every now and again - but instead he wasn’t doing very well with general school work.

At his age, it felt like he wasn’t supposed to be at school anymore anyway, and university had always been far from his mind, and yet here he was, meeting up with his tutor like he did every Tuesday afternoon.

“I thought you enjoyed our tutoring sessions,” Harry said as he bounced along the hallway, books in his hands and an ever present smile on his face.

“I like _you_ , not the actual studying,” Liam pointed out, rolling his eyes as they made their way to the cafeteria together. Harry was about a year younger than Liam, but he always seemed bouncy and happy, smile dimpling his cheek, and it made him look even younger, which made it all the more embarrassing for Liam to be tutored by him.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” Liam apologised and gave Harry a pat on the shoulder. “But I’m older and I’ve been here longer; if anything I should be the one tutoring _you._ ”

Harry shrugged, that smile still on his face even though Liam had just insulted him in a way.  It was like Harry never lost his positive attitude, which was probably for the better because Liam wasn’t exactly the most pleasant student.

“Had worse,” Harry commented and then waved excitedly at someone Liam couldn’t see yet.

The next thing Liam knew was that there was an arm slung around his shoulder, and another face grinning up at him with almost unbearable glee.

“Leemo,” Niall exclaimed loudly. “Lima. Payne Train. How are you doing on this fantastic afternoon?” Within half a second he was next to Harry, hugging him tightly which came as a surprise to Liam but Harry was obviously expecting it because he’d been holding out his arms for Niall before he had even moved.

“Brought some company.”

“I literally did _not_ ask to be here,” said Louis from the side, finally coming into Liam’s field of vision. “All I wanted was to survive the anchovy stew.”

Liam laughed and waved Louis along with them to a free table.

They sat down while Harry and Niall vanished to get them some food, just to make sure nobody else would take their spot.

“You seem incredibly cheery today,” Liam pointed out with raised eyebrows, watching the way Louis traced a few spots on the metal table. Someone had carved little tongue twisters into it, like ‘Many Maryland Mutants Mingled’ and ‘Iron Tin as Iron Can’. “Is it because of History? Did she make you recite all the important dates of the Big War again?”

Louis snorted ungracefully and rolled his eyes as he looked back up, blue eyes dark with annoyance. “Why are you hanging out with that guy?” he asked, nodding in the general direction of Harry and Niall.

“I don’t know, he’s quick and that’s convenient when you need someone to fetch your textbooks from your dorm last minute,” Liam answered with a shrug, tilting his head to the side questioningly.

“Not _Niall_ !” Louis frowned and leaned back again, almost falling down the back of the metal bench. “ _Everyone_ hangs out with Niall. I’m talking about Sir Talk-a-lot. The one with the dimples and the annoying voice.”

Liam laughed, eyes squinting as he covered his mouth with the back of his left hand. He knew that Louis didn’t mean to be funny but that didn’t make the things he said any less amusing. “Harry’s my tutor,” he explained. “My Science tutor? I told you I had to get tutoring!”

A crash announced that one of the other students had just worked their metal bending powers on one of the tables, and it was quite impressive how little anybody seemed to care about it, except for a girl who just said “You spilled my juice!” with a loud sigh.

“You didn’t tell me your tutor was an aspiring circus mentalist,” Louis pointed out just as Harry and Niall came back with four trays of food, one of which Niall was impressively balancing on top of his head.

“Got you some cake,” Niall told Louis with a bright smile as he put the trays down, eyes sparkling excitedly as he watched Louis examining the brown pile of goo, that was supposed to be cake, suspiciously.

“Say Thank You,” Harry said, a frown on his forehead, arms stemmed into his hips.

“I’m not a parrot,” Louis answered, staring at Harry as if he was the world’s biggest pile of scum. There seemed to be a quiet exchange between the two of them until Louis broke eye contact and instead turned to his stew, stabbing his fork into it, as if it was the reason for his ruined childhood.

“Anyway,” Liam started, but nobody really seemed to pay him much attention. As always. Liam was always the person who was left aside sometimes, because everyone else was just too caught up in exciting stuff while Liam was busy showing the new students the way to the closest bathroom. “I heard they’re gonna get the older Mutants out on the field soon to -”

“You know, just because you imagine my face in that stew won’t put any holes in my face,” Harry interrupted him, and for a second Liam was confused until he realised that the words were directed at Louis.

“I could do much worse than put holes in your face,” Louis snarled back, eyes sparkling dangerously as he looked at Harry.

“I know,” Harry just said with a shrug, then turned back to his own food with a smile on his lips and a little hum vibrating from his throat.

“Tension,” Niall pointed out. He’d already finished all of his food and had apparently already had the time to get himself seconds. Or thirds. Liam really wasn’t even trying to keep up anymore.

“You’re infuriating,” Louis said and pushed his stew to the side, seemingly not hungry anymore.

“It’s a bit concerning that you find friendliness infuriating,” Harry said, scrunching his nose up a little as he ran a hand through his messy curls. “You can also stop calling me names in your head now, I got the gist of it, there’s only so many synonyms for ‘dickhead’.”

Louis seemed to want to say something but before he could Niall pushed an elbow between his ribs to stop him. “Alright,” he said instead and shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll be nice, if he stays out of my head.”

Liam could see Harry rolling his eyes but that was the only sign he showed of how difficult he thought Louis was being.

“We’ve got to head off for tutoring in a bit anyway,” Liam pointed out and finally everyone was paying him some attention again. Niall looked vaguely interested, Louis slightly relieved and Harry like he had completely forgotten about the fact that they still needed to do some Science.

“Right,” Harry said with a quick nod and put a hand on Liam’s shoulder. “We thought it’d be nice to get out of the Academy to study.” He grinned and poked his tongue out at Niall for something he must have been thinking. “Liam’s getting quite sick of the library.”

“I never said that,” Liam protested, but fell silent when Harry raised his eyebrows at him.

“Good, you kids have a good time,” Niall said as he swallowed down the last bite of his fifth stew. “Terrifying Tommo and I will try to sort out his personality disorder in the meanwhile.”

The look Louis sent him said that he’d rather eat his own foot than have a therapy session with Niall.

“Don’t let him strangle you,” Harry warned with a sigh and got up, holding onto Liam’s arm to pull him off the bench as well.

“I wasn’t even thinking that,” Louis protested with a frown, glaring at Harry as he and Liam waved their goodbyes.

“I know,” Harry just said with a shrug, and with that he and Liam were on the way out of the cafeteria.  

They made their way to the head office together because students weren’t allowed to leave the Academy without notice; not even students like Liam who were close to finishing their education and were already sent out on actual missions sometimes.

If they left for more than a day they had to keep the Academy informed on where they were, and if they wanted to get out for a few hours they at least had to make sure their teachers would be able to figure out that they weren’t at the Academy.

That was why they always had to put their names down in a large book, so if something happened they could be checked up on.

There was this boy once who left the Academy without saying anything about it, and he ended up causing a huge crash by accidentally blinding three bus drivers at once. It had been a mess and nobody had known where he had been until he’d shown up in a hospital a week later.

So Liam obviously made sure that his and Harry’s names were put down properly in the book before they left to sit down at the closest coffee shop, with a bunch of books and two steaming cups of tea.

“Where did we stop last week?” Harry asked as he opened one of his books and skimmed a few pages, probably to make sure he remembered everything correctly.

Liam sure didn’t remember anything of what they had done except for the fact that soundwaves could supposedly help you fly. However that was supposed to work.

“I’m glad our lessons are paying off,” Harry said with a little laugh and took a sip of his tea. “We need to find _something_ about Science that interests you or else you’ll never remember anything of what we’re doing.”

Liam sighed in defeat. He knew it had to be exhausting for Harry to explain something over and over again to a person who clearly wasn’t interested in anything he was saying, but he just couldn’t help it. Science was boring and Liam didn’t feel like there was any point in him knowing all about it.

Some things worked and others just didn’t, that was all there was to it.

“They probably won’t allow that answer in exams,” Harry pointed out and then turned his attention to a TV set in the corner of the room. The volume was fairly low but there were only a few people in the coffee shop so it was easy to make out anyway.

_“- who was just about to sign the anti Mutant law for our schools has been found dead this morning in his West London residence. The cause of death is not yet determined, however, skilled doctors are currently talking about poison,”_ said the reporter on screen, looking less than concerned for the deceased person’s condition. Liam thought he could see his eyes flashing yellow in a certain camera angle.

“I think he did it,” he pointed out with a nod at the guy on TV. “Look at him, he couldn’t care less that a person just died.”

Harry frowned at him and shook his head. “Just because he’s a Mutant doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. If you start thinking that way you’re no better than the humans who try to lock us away.”

Liam shrugged and averted his eyes. Harry was right of course, but it was Liam’s natural instinct to assume that any Mutant who wasn’t part of the Academy was part of the group that felt like humans deserved to die for their ignorance.

The Academy was all about teaching Mutants to live a good life among humans, and to use their powers properly so they wouldn't harm anybody whereas those who just made their own way often got caught up in the idea that humans were evil and Mutants superior.

“I’m pretty sure some of the kids at the Academy share that idea,” Harry said and pushed a notebook in Liam’s direction to encourage him to actually get some studying done. “There’s this one kid in my P.E. class who keeps thinking about taking over the world, which, to be fair, his power is turning on lights by clapping his hands, and I’m pretty sure humans invented that already."  
  
Liam laughed and shook his head before reaching for the textbook and a pen. “We all know _The Clapper_ rules the world,” he said with a shrug and then finally let himself be persuaded to get some studying done.


	4. Chapter 4

There were times when Niall moved through the hallways, thinking that the world stopped. On more than one occasion over the past couple of years he had stopped mid-motion just to make sure that everyone else continued moving. Small things reassured him. Someone blinked; the water was still flowing out of the fountain; there were still bees working their way through all the flowers in the garden outside. It didn’t take much to convince him that the world was still moving. That sensation became less and less insistent as the years passed but it was still very weird when it did happen. 

Other than that there was not too much that weirded Niall out. Usually he had enough time to take both one and two looks at things happening, before others could register it. It also helped that he attended a school filled with kids that could make water freeze and talk to each other without opening their mouths. Unfortunately he did not have that kind of super hearing. That would be nice. It could get quite tedious hearing only half a sentence of a conversation because you happened to pass too quickly. Niall was a curious soul, and as much as he hated to admit it, he sometimes happened to be listening in on conversations he wasn’t intended to hear. 

It wasn’t his fault people talked loudly enough for him to hear.

And as if on queue he picked up two words as he passed a boy and a girl talking. ‘Death’ and ‘lab’. Niall stopped dead in his tracks and turned to the couple by their lockers, who seemed to still be as engrossed in the topic.

“Who, what? What happened?” He was basically bouncing on the spot.

The girl looked like she had stopped breathing at Niall’s sudden appearance, but the boy that answered was completely unfazed.

“They apparently found a bunch of dead bodies at a laboratory in Imperial Wharf,” he said, looking at the girl as if though he wasn’t sure he should share this information. ”They have no idea who did it,” he added as Niall opened his mouth.

“At a lab? Like animal testing or something?” Those things did get out of hand at times.

“I really don’t know. I just overheard Mr. Morley telling one of the older students.”

No one else passing seemed to find their conversation interesting enough to stop and join. 

“Thanks,” Niall called over his shoulder as he turned on the spot and hurried off in the same direction he had come from. He needed to tell someone; the common student might not care about ‘a bunch of dead people’. But he knew of a group of people that would.

 

For a person never caught in a crowd, Louis was terribly difficult to find. Niall had kind of expected Harry to be able to hear him looking for him. And Liam, well Liam was always on top of things anyway so it was strange not to find him anywhere near the school office. However, his average hearing sufficed as he scooted closer to the headmaster’s door to hear them talking in lowered voices.

“...not as if there is a logical explanation for it,” Niall could recognise the headmaster’s, Mr Weston's, voice. 

“But then again, entire buildings short circuit every now and again,” their Philosophy teacher butted in and Niall could practically see the headmaster roll his eyes.

“Killing every soul in the building along the way?”

At that, Niall’s eavesdropping was interrupted by a very unsubtle Liam bursting through the door to the office. “Have you seen -”  he started before Niall could stop him and instantly the voices on the other side of the door quietened. Sighing loudly, Niall moved away from the door to not be caught red handed. He turned to give Liam a disapproving look, but then the door to the headmaster’s room was opened and half the school’s main staff stepped out into the office.

“Can we help you two?” Mr. Morley smiled and raised an eyebrow at them. Then again, he only had one long eyebrow, so it would be fair to say he raised the left side of it.

“We heard about the deaths, and - “

“When are we leaving?” Niall asked, shamelessly cutting Liam off mid sentence.

“‘We’ are not going anywhere. This has nothing to do with us, Mr. Horan,” the headmaster said as he moved to the side to let their Sports teacher pass - they all watched her levitating towards the exit of the office. Niall could not help but wonder, if you mixed his and her powers, would he be able to fly at rocket speed?

“But sir,” Liam interjected. “Clearly -”

“Things are often not as clear as we think they are,” the headmaster smiled at Liam before moving towards the exit himself. “You both would do good in forgetting about this whole ordeal until we know what we are dealing with. Don’t you agree?”

Shrugging, Niall looked to Liam who looked just as unconvinced. “Yes,” they both answered.

“I don’t know about you, but I need to know what they are up to,” Niall said once the office was empty apart from the pair of them and the school goldfish; Dash.

“I am not entirely convinced - “

“How could you not be? Something is obviously up, we need to figure out what is happening,” Niall started walking after the teachers, making sure to keep a pace that he knew Liam could match without spraining an ankle or two.

“If people, every once in awhile, would let me finish, I am sure I’d sound a lot less repetitive.”

Niall let out a ‘sheesh’ sound before taking a few quick steps to walk backwards in front of Liam so that they were face to face as they subtly followed the teachers down the hall, which had filled with students by now. After all, the afternoon classes were done.

“You were saying?”

“I was saying, I am not convinced this is just some random occurrence where an entire building - “

“Where did they go?” Niall interrupted quickly the second the teachers were out of his field of sight. He was too occupied trying to spot them again to hear Liam sighing.

Wherever he looked there were students. He appreciated the short ones that he could look over, but the tall ones were not his favourites at the moment. He occasionally caught a glimpse of the headmaster’s blue hair or Mr. Morley’s wide shoulders, but in general all he saw were dismissed students.

Then suddenly Niall’s eyes fell on a mop of curls that he’d recognise anywhere. Harry was walking alongside a girl with geels. He wished Harry would spend one second of his power on figuring out where the teachers - that had just passed him - were going.

“See you later,” he said to Liam but did not await an answer before he started pushing past students, making sure not to step on toes or push books out of people’s arms. He might have borrowed a lollipop from a girl in the year above him. After all, she had one in each mouth.

“They are heading for the library,” Harry smiled to Niall as he slowed in to pass him.

Thank God for Harry.

The library. Getting there would take him approximately 3.19 seconds. Add another three minutes and the teachers should have arrived. This left Niall over three minutes of Niall-time.

Let’s just say that being super quick had its perks.

 

By the time the teachers arrived at the library and all of them had pushed through the doors, Niall came back from the cafeteria with two hot dogs in one hand and his third serving of nachos in the other. He slid through the door just before it swung shut, and settled behind one of the bigger bookshelves, a few meters behind the table where the teachers had sat down.

Niall very rarely visited the library, but he always expected it to be a bit more crowded. It must have been the oncoming winter holiday that left people with less studying to do. How convenient.

“... but we can’t possibly know that. We have all seen what they can do. They don’t need our help to kill each other off.” Good old Peggy, at it again. Niall had always been amused by her never ending pessimism.

“Peggy, please. Can we all just take a moment and think about this before we start blaming an entire race?” Enoch said calmly. Their Politics teacher had always fascinated Niall. He had always thought that Harry was calm and slow, but Enoch Wade clearly took the prize.

At that, the majority of the teachers started talking at once. Peggy was clearly not pleased with her colleague's comment and their Science teacher, Mr. Morley, made a few non committal noises as Niall reached over his shoulder, grabbing the first book his fingers touched.  _ The Catcher in the Rye _ . He had never read it. Doubted he’d ever finish it; but that didn’t stop him from flipping through the pages with one hand, slowly finishing his last hot dog, as the teachers behind the bookshelf continued their discussions.

 

Soon enough they left the topic of whether it could possibly be mutants or not and moved on to what would happen if the Academy for some reason was to be under attack. They did not train people to fight here. Niall doubted half of the kids could defend themselves if it came to it. The Academy was just what it sounded like, an academic institution; not a boot camp to prepare you for war. Although, he doubted it would come to that.

“Eavesdropping is not a desirable trait, Mr Horan.”

Nearly dropping the book, Niall jumped back against the shelf, praying it wouldn’t topple over. He wasn’t sure he would be able to catch a couple hundred books falling and replacing them in the bookshelf without the teachers noticing. Before him stood the Librarian, Jani, a small smile playing on her lips.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was eating,” Niall said, holding up the last piece of his last hot dog whilst carefully putting the book back on the shelf.

“I know you don’t come here often, but eating is  _ certainly _ not allowed in  _ my _ library.” She raised her eyebrow as Niall opened his mouth to try and talk his way out of that one. Instead of talking he pushed the food into his mouth and closed it, chewing with a smile.

“I’ll be on my way,” he said before backing away from her. Before he turned the corner to somehow sneak past the teachers, he saw her reach up for  _ The Catcher in the Rye _ and replace it where it was supposed to be. 

 

Finding the others was a lot easier this time around. Harry seemed to have rounded both Liam and Louis up with him outside the library. He wondered what he had to bribe Louis with to have him come along voluntarily. They all asked what he had found out during his time in the library. Refusing to talk about it with so many people around, Niall decided that the cafeteria was a good option. It also made the possibilities of getting a snack significantly greater.

“So apparently,” Niall started after they had all sat down around a table in the corner of the cafeteria, “about a dozen scientists were found dead in a laboratory in Imperial Wharf. No one knows what happened. They all seem to have been struck by lightning? Which is really strange because they were inside. And I doubt even one of them were stupid enough to put a fork in a power socket. But then again, I mean, some people - “

“So no survivors?” Liam interrupted, taking a sip from the soda can he got from the vending machine. He pushed a second can in Louis’ general direction. “Conveniently no one that can provide us with clues?”

“Not a soul, little Lima,” Niall shrugged and started on his second sandwich since they sat down. “The entire building was pitch black when they were found. Apparently there had been a power cut as well. It is as if though lightning struck the building and killed everything in it while it was at it. But it just doesn’t make sense.”

“What were the teachers talking about?” Harry asked, opening his mouth for the first time since they reached the cafeteria. Louis shot him a dirty look but Harry looked at no one but Niall.

“At first they couldn’t agree on whether it was a mutant killing or not. You know we’ve had a few of those lately. It seems like the most reasonable explanation, but you know how Mr Weston is; when he sets his mind; good luck changing it. Peggy made a fair try though.” Niall could see Louis scoff as he mentioned their History teacher. 

“She has no reason to trust humans,” Harry said, shooting a look at Louis, who looked like a deer caught in headlights where he was holding his soda can, mid-sip. 

“Stop that,” he hissed without lowering the drink.

Shrugging, Harry turned back to Niall. “Did they come to a conclusion?”

“Not before I left,” Niall shook his head and finished the sandwich. “It feels like those old bats could argue until we all grow grey hairs and they won’t reach a decision either way.”

“You do realise some of those ‘old bats’ are our age, right?” Louis said, rolling his eyes as Harry cleared his throat. “What? Did you find something unusually offensive in that sentence as well?”

Smiling, Harry pushed his chair back and stood up. “I was actually going to excuse myself, I have quite a hefty essay due Monday. I’d quite like to finish it.”

They said their good-bye’s to Harry, but before he left them he turned back to Louis. “Now  _ that _ ,” he said, about to poke Louis’ crown but missed as Louis dodged him, sitting up straight in the chair, “is offensive.”

“Go away,” Louis muttered, his eyes still set on Harry.

“Laters.”

 

The three of them continued to discuss possible reasons and explanations; Liam brought up a new device he had read about that could take out entire buildings, but had no explanation as to whether it was more likely humans or mutants had their hands on it. Louis did not say much, but occasionally nodded or disagreed with loud sighs and grunts. Niall certainly didn’t know what it was but he felt like they were missing something - he couldn’t quite put his finger on it but there were a few things not adding up. Sometimes Liam would say something that had Niall’s mind racing in a completely different direction and he would end up almost being able to pinpoint what it was that bothered him. But just as quickly as that feeling came to him, it was gone as Liam continued his rants about stealth planes, something he read in a book.

Eventually Louis excused himself. Something about being hungry. Although Niall suspected it had more to do with him getting a break from the slightly out of hand theories that Liam had started throwing at them. A few of them were amusing but he didn't blame Louis for leaving the pair of them alone. Liam was so involved in his explaining that Niall doubted his friend noticed if he went to get another sandwich, even without using any powers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part 2  
** **The Rogue**

 

Sometimes Harry just annoyed Louis so much.  
  
It wasn’t even anything specific; there was just something about him that was extremely aggravating and got under Louis’ skin like nothing else could. Maybe it was how patronising he sounded sometimes, or how he always acted like he knew what Louis was thinking and why he was thinking it.

Either way, it was annoying and aggravating and just made him kind of tired and hungry.

Especially hungry.

So of course Louis found himself at a McDonald’s because it was the cheapest food humans had to offer without it tasting as bad as the lunch he’d been served in the cafeteria for years now.

A lot of children seemed to have just gotten out of school, their uniforms dirty from playing in the park, their faces lighting up with glee when an employeé handed them a balloon. It was slightly endearing but also strangely unnerving. Louis didn’t think he’d ever felt as happy as those kids, especially not over a balloon.

“Hi, can I help?”

Louis was pulled from his thoughts as the young woman in front of him spoke. Her brown eyes looked almost black, her hair frizzy under a dark grey cap with a large yellow M on the front. She looked a lot more like Louis felt; sad, angry, a little lost.

“Get me that twenty chicken nugget box,” Louis requested with a shrug, taking a little while to choose the sauces to go with it.

“Are you eating in?” the woman asked and Louis laughed, loud and hollow.

“God, no.”

As if he would ever stay in this place where kids were screaming left and right, parents chattering loudly about their new baby’s first word, and teenagers bragging about who they slept with last night.

No, this definitely wasn’t Louis’ kind of place and he was happy to leave again as quickly as he could.

He handed the woman a five pound note and waited for his change, then stepped back for a few minutes as he waited for his food to be done. A kid next to him started crying over not getting a McFlurry and Louis rolled his eyes as the exhausted mother added one to her order afterall.

“Here you go, sir,” said the woman behind the counter as she handed Louis an unnecessarily large brown paper bag, only after stuffing about twenty paper towels inside. Louis was pretty sure she forgot about at least one of his sauces, but he didn’t care enough to comment on it.

“Cheers, love,” he just said instead and offered her a tight lipped smile before turning around and sighing in exasperation as a group of teenagers ran straight into him, as if they were all surgically attached by the hip and therefore unable to part to let him through.

“Watch where you’re going, faggot,” one of them exclaimed loudly, tossing some paper and two burnt chips at him.

Louis stopped dead in his tracks to glare at the young guy. He looked only a few years younger than Louis; His tie was undone and just loosely hanging around his neck, his blazer was covered in grass stains and his grey trousers were ripped at the knee. He looked about as cool as every badboy in teenage chick-flicks.

Not that Louis watched a lot of them.

“Don’t just stare at me, pretty boy, get out of the way. Or do you fancy me so much that you forgot how to function like a normal person?” The group of teenagers laughed and Louis frowned at the guy, feeling his insides burning with humiliation.

“I wouldn’t say things like that to people you don’t know,” Louis pointed out, eyebrows raised as the teenagers just kept laughing. One of them had gone to get in the queue but the rest of them were still standing around him like they were a wolfpack and he was the rabbit they’d decided to feed their young for dinner.

The guy who’d been talking to Louis exchanged a quick glance with the girl next to him and rolled his eyes. “Oh, and why’s that?” he asked, shrugging like he didn’t really care for the answer.

Louis gave him one anyway.

“Because you never know what those people might be able to do,” he said, and with that he pushed himself through the group and towards the exit. Their laughter was still ringing in his ears as he opened the door and threw it shut again in a young woman’s face without apologising as she made rude gestures in his general direction.

His day really couldn’t get any better than this, could it?

First Harry was being a general pain in the arse with his dimpled smile and his stupid attitude, and now those kids had decided that he was the perfect person to tyrannise this afternoon.

He sighed and opened the large McDonald’s bag to fish out the sauces in between the paper towels.

“Ketchup,” he said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “I asked for sour cream and curry.” With a loud groan he tossed the sauces over his shoulder, face red with anger.

Anger at Harry and those kids and that stupid McDonald’s that never seemed to be able to get his order right.

“The world is testing me today,” he murmured and didn’t flinch when a loud explosion sounded behind him.

People were screaming as stone collapsed over everyone inside the McDonald’s, and smoke started to fill the air, but Louis didn’t turn around to give it any attention. This place didn’t deserve his attention.

“You really shouldn’t test me,” he just muttered and opened his box of chicken nuggets, tossing the bag and the paper towels into a nearby bin. He mustered one of the nuggets with a curious hum and then took a bite.

At least those tasted nice.

Sirens sounded through the street, firemen shouting orders somewhere in the back as they did everything they could to put out the fire and get any survivors out of the collapsed building.

It was a bit of a shame, really.

Louis was gonna miss those chicken nuggets.


	6. Chapter 6

Harry knew that he pushed Louis’ buttons from time to time. He just didn’t quite get why he would have to make it into a huge deal. Every time.

It was a lovely day. The sun was out and it was unusually warm for a Thursday in December. The park adjoining the woods was crowded with families; Harry had lost count of all the children running around, playing their games, changing the rules as they saw fit. It was fascinating how quickly they became uninterested in the things around them. The swinging set that was the center of attention ten minutes ago, was now left untouched and the majority of the children were crowded around the pond where three large kois swam around; trying to avoid the stones that the children threw into the water.

Harry felt the young woman next to him tense as one of the children let out a shout of joy.

“It feels like I haven’t seen you in ages,” she said, tucking a brown strand of hair behind her ear, and Harry could tell that she just wanted to think about something else than the children trying to grab the dead fish from the pond.

“It is because you refused to stick around the school longer than you have to, Gem.” Harry said and scooted a bit to the left on the patch of grass they were sitting on to let a squirrel pass. It doubtlessly climbed up into Gemma’s lap after it sniffed her hand.

“Can you blame me?” she said.

At that Harry shrugged and reached out his hand to the squirrel. It sniffed him but animals had never bonded with him like they bonded with Gemma.

“Don’t you look down in the mouth. What’s up?”

“Just having a bad day.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Gemma said and smiled gently as the squirrel nuzzled into her palm, obviously preferring her touch to Harry’s.

“That’s alright.” 

After that there was silence. At least between them. All around them the children were still running around and a mother occasionally shouted at her offspring for not doing as they were told.

Harry didn’t mind silence with Gemma. It was never forced and he never felt the need to fill the silent gaps with pointless comments or remarks. He just knew. He had never felt the sensation of being in someone’s head as strongly as when he was with her. Words were simply not needed between the two of them.

“Mom! Look, I got one!”

The child’s outburst had them both turn around on the grass. It took Harry a few seconds to spot the child calling for her mother. Then he saw her, her blue jacket matching the colour of the sky and her brown hair the bark of the trees behind her. She looked like a child that could be one with nature.

“It just walked straight into my hands!”

In her hands the girl had a butterfly. It was trapped between her short fingers as her hands formed a cage. She was jumping around excitedly, her little eyes wide with joy. The girl’s mother was nowhere in sight but with each joyous attempt to get her mother’s attention, two more children joined her to see what the commotion was about. She let them all peek between her fingers at the little insect but would not let anyone try to touch or hold it.

“I don’t -” Gemma started, but she was cut off when the girl screamed so loudly it made the squirrel hide under one of her cardigans.

Two boys, probably brothers, stood above the girl where she lay on the ground, obviously having been knocked over. One of them, holding a stick, was talking but it was too far away for them to hear what he was saying. The older of the two boys reached down and grabbed the girl’s hands, trying to pry them open. The girl’s scream was shattering but she eventually gave in and the boy trapped the butterfly in his own, considerably much smaller flesh cage.

“Give it back, it is mine. I found it!”

“Yeah?” The boy’s eyes shone with glee as he made a show of making the grip of the butterfly tighter and tighter.

Gemma was about to get up next to Harry, but he put a hand on her knee to keep her seated. “But he -”

Harry didn’t need to ask her why she had stopped herself from continuing the sentence. The butterfly had been crushed in the boy’s grip and he now skipped away after tossing the lifeless insect at the girl. She was crying and stood up to go to her mother who had appeared shortly after the boys left.

Harry could feel Gemma’s eyes on the girl and her mother, her hands slowly stroking the animal in her lap, but his eyes were still on the boys. He watched them. The older one ran after his younger brother, trying to beat him with the stick his brother had broken off the berch at the edge of the woods.

Children were cruel. Harry had always found that the cruelest of adults were nowhere near as evil as their younger equivalents. Surely adults had distorted ideas of mean and vile ways of making a person hurt. Their thought process was far more advanced and they had less trouble planning an evil action. But whereas some children had these abilities as well they lacked one thing that many, most adults even, had. Children had no concept of when to stop. No idea of when they had gone too far. Too far to repair something broken. And they broke things. All the time.

“Where did she go?”

Harry looked to Gemma; her eyes wide as she shuffled over to look all around her. The squirrel was gone. Harry started moving around as well to see for himself where the little animal could have gone but stopped as he heard a child’s voice.

“Here’s another one!”

“Get the stones,” shouted another child.

They both turned around to see the children crowded around a tree with a weathered old trunk. At the top of the tree, partly protected by the few leaves that were still there,Harry spotted the squirrel, eyes wide with terror. Some of the children had started throwing small rocks and sticks at her to keep her from jumping to another tree. One of the kids had kneeled in front of the tree, his back to Harry but as he shuffled over a few seconds later his flint and steel were revealed and Harry could see how he worked them expertly in his hands to create a fire.

Once again no parents were around. The fact that none of them had seemed to care about their children’s activities was almost as upsetting as their children’s action. Most of the parents sat on benches closer to the playground, passing around a colourful thermos of coffee or tea and a couple of tupperwares filled with toffees and brownies.

A happy whoop made Harry return his attention to the tree with the squirrel in it. The boy with the flint and steel had managed to get some sparkles flying. He leaned in to cover it from the light wind before adding more of the birch bark that he must have gathered earlier. A small trail of smoke showed between the children’s legs within seconds. As the firemaker bent down to give the sparks he created a gentle blow, Harry tensed.

Gemma gave him a pointed look.

“I know what you are thinking.” Harry said, relaxing as he leaned back on the ground, twirling two strands of grass between his fingers.

It did not take the boy long to get an actual fire going, even though it was a small one. But no one really paid attention to it because at that moment a loud scream sounded through the park and possibly into the nearby lying forest as well.

“Josh. Oh my god, Josh!”

One of the coffee drinking parents stood doubled over by the pond, her arms halfway into the water. Getting help from another parent she finally managed to fish out the child, Josh. His face was blue from asphyxia and there were algae inside his jacket and around his throat.

Just as they managed to fish Josh out another hand appeared. The face of a girl surfaced. A man nearby let out an unearthly scream falling to his knees. A woman, probably his wife rushed to the pond to fish their daughter out. She too, blue from lack of oxygen.

This set the parents, coffee drinking or not, into a state of panic where all that mattered was that their child was safe and sound in their arms. As soon as they found a child that wasn’t theirs they pushed it to the side to continue the hunt for their own.

Humans were strange that way. One would think that they’d make sure that the child they found were put in their parents’ arms before continuing through the area to look for the next child. But no. All they cared about were themselves. Just like their children.

Naturally the place that attracted their attention was the smoke coming from the nearby trees. There were already children running out from under them and parent after parent sighed in relief when they finally had their child in their arms. However, a woman with a big fur coat and a man with too large eyes turned up empty handed as all the children had rushed out through the shrubbery.

Next to him, Gemma had leaned forward. She wasn’t moving apart from the shallow breaths she let out occasionally.

The parents had some trouble getting through the shrubbery. It was as if though the trees had moved. As strange as it sounded, they had created somewhat of a bubble. To prevent people from coming in or from preventing the smoke of getting out. Possibly both. The man managed, with quite some force, to break some branches to get inside. The woman followed suit. Within seconds there was another scream and the man came out with his son, the fire maker, in his arms. The woman stumbled out soon after, her legs buckling under her as she pulled out her daughter by the arms. Neither of the children breathed despite their parents attempts of mouth-to-mouth.

Gemma looked to Harry who just pointed to a patch beside the scene. The squirrel was looking straight at the children before bouncing over to Gemma again, settling back into her lap.

“Mary!”

Harry would wonder who Mary was, but seeing as a dozen adults rushed to the large willow just next to the playground, he had no doubts that the child hanging from one of the branches was Mary. Looking at her at a first glance, it was hard to get why she would just not jump down; she was not _that_ far up. Only, at a second glance, you could see the long thin branches twisted and swirled around her neck. Her legs were kicking, trying to find any bearing, _anything_ to stand on.

Two of the tallest men tried to reach up but she was just out of reach. When they tried to extend their reach by having one of the men climb onto the other one it was as if though she was hoisted, staying just out of reach. The women on the ground shouted at the men who obviously grew more and more upset and frustrated since there was nothing they could do. There was nothing they could do.

Slowly but surely Mary’s kicking grew less frequent and in time her eyes, previously flicking through the crowd of helpless parents, stopped and froze on one thing. Just like her, they were no longer moving. One of the women wailed as she fell to her knees, the other women reaching down to comfort. She pushed them away and wailed louder still.

The parents that hadn’t been occupied with trying to get Mary down from the tree were still running around. Some of them with their children still in their arms, others with panic written on their face from not being able to find their child. Some of them rushed by Harry and Gemma, others went into the woods to check any possible hiding place.

“Don’t worry,” Gemma hushed the squirrel each time a child or parent rushed past, but the squirrel seemed calm and confident in her lap. She was simply sitting on her hind legs, looking out over the commotion with her snout twitching at times and her little tail lowering and rising as she bent forward to look at something more closely.

Harry knew what she was looking at.

There was a patch of purple and turquoise flowers by the edge of the forest. And it was growing rapidly. It was almost as if though the patch of flowers grew in size to be able to hide something.

It was hiding something.

From one angle you could see a hand tightly holding onto a birch branch whereas from another angle a twisted mouth tried to scream for help. Not a word came out though. Their vocal cords; their entire throats in fact, were distorted by the flowers’ roots.

Had the parents come their way a minute earlier they would probably have been able to pull the boys out from under the flower bed but now it was too late. Instead of helping the boys the parents rushed over the flowers and the boys in a desperate attempt in finding them.

Ironic. If they just stopped and paid attention to what was around them they would find what they were looking for. But they were too narrow minded for that. They were too caught up in what they wanted and needed to look around and see to anyone else’s needs.

“Those are my favourite flowers,” Gemma said lowly.  
“I know,” Harry said with a dimpled smile.


	7. Chapter 7

It was quite late when Harry made his way to his room, sweaty and exhausted, and in dire need of a shower. Most kids had already retreated to their dorms, and the sparse thoughts floating around the corridors mostly came from older students or teachers.

Harry had always quite enjoyed listening to the passing thoughts of someone rushing down the hallway, or someone getting off a bus. Those were the times when most people just let themselves think the thoughts they would usually restrain if they were actually paying attention to their own minds.

_ ‘I shouldn’t have said that, I should not have said that, she thinks I’m an idiot now’  _ came from the boy standing by his lockers with a single rose in his hand. Quite obviously he hadn’t gotten around to giving it to whoever it was for.

_ ‘Can’t believe he’d cheat on me, that lying bastard’  _ was what a girl around his own age was musing about as she collected her books from the floor. Her make-up was smeared from where she’d been crying, and she was trembling all over.  _ ‘I could kill him’. _

That was a common one.

Harry had always found it a little strange how ashamed people were of those thoughts, as if they didn’t all have them occasionally.

_ ‘Oh no, not him’. _

Harry turned around when Louis’ voice filtered into his mind, annoyance lacing his thoughts like poison.

Louis had been especially aggravated with him this morning, and it seemed like it hadn’t gotten that much better throughout the day. He was still wearing a frown on his forehead, and there were wrinkles in the sleeves of his T-Shirt that came from obviously having been scrunched up in his glove covered fists.

Harry liked the gloves; they were black, laced with a few silvery speckles, the fabric outlining each slender finger. Louis wore them almost constantly and even though Harry knew why, they’d never talked about it before.

“Not happy to see me?” Harry asked, tilting his head to the side as he looked at Louis with raised eyebrows. For a moment it looked like Louis would just turn around and walk in a different direction, but then he seemed to decide that they were going to have to talk sooner or later, because he walked up to Harry and stopped only a couple of feet away from him.

The girl, whose boyfriend had cheated on her, slammed her locker door shut with a wail that made Harry roll his eyes without losing his dimpled smile that he was directing at Louis.

“You’re so far down my list of people I want to see that your name didn’t even fit on the paper anymore,” Louis pointed out but his thoughts were nowhere as cool and collected as his words. His mind was restless, helpless, guilty even. He was angry and annoyed, of course, but his thoughts were also racing like he was a deer caught in the headlights.

“You don’t have to act like nothing bothers you,” Harry pointed out a little accusingly and leaned against the wall, crossing his ankles where he stood. “I keep telling you -”

Louis didn’t let him finish his sentence, snorting rudely as he took a step closer, his hands balled into fists. “And I keep telling you to stay out of my head,” he growled, looking like he was ready to punch Harry for any other word he might say.

He wasn’t. Harry could tell that he had no intention of starting a fistfight right here in the hallways.

“It’s not like I can turn it off.”

Louis rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in front of his chest. His teeth poked out as he nibbled on his bottom lip, pulling at dry skin. 

“It’s not like I can pull gloves over my brain to stop it.”

At those words Louis tensed, and Harry had known it before he’d said it. Never had he ever said anything so rude and spiteful to any of the kids at the Academy, and he wasn’t even sure why he’d said it in the first place. Sure, Louis was mostly rude and sarcastic but he didn’t deserve to be attacked like that.

Maybe he just wanted Louis to stop hiding behind these millions of walls he’d built to protect himself, or maybe he was just fed up with this bitter, passive aggressive attitude that Louis presented every single day, and especially when Harry was around.

Or maybe Harry was just in the mood for being mean.

“You’re a right prick,” Louis hissed, and now his voice was hurt, and his racing mind was reflected in his wide blue eyes. He wasn’t crying - Harry wasn’t sure he was even capable of that kind of display of emotions - but there was an ocean of sadness under his eyelids that had rarely ever seen the light of day before. “And you stink too.”

Harry let out a little laugh, hands up in the air as he shook his head. “Guilty as charged,” he said, and then took a step forward to wrap a hand around Louis’ skinny wrist. He could feel the fabric of the glove under his fingertips, silky and soft, and it distracted him for a moment from how Louis flinched away from his touch.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said quietly, looking at the floor. “I should not have said that, it was cruel.”

Louis nodded, still tense, his wrist stiff in Harry’s grasp. “I never asked for this,” he said, raspy, high-pitched, a little confused.

Harry shook his head. “Neither did I.”

They looked at each other for a long time in complete silence, not moving even an inch until a couple of teachers passed them in a rush. Harry could see the red checks of Professor Lloyd’s kilt and the colourful tattoo on Miss Clark’s back rushing past, and he only had a few seconds to grasp a few tidbits of their conversation.

“ - said there were five of them,” Professor Lloyd said, his thick scottish accent making it difficult for Harry to understand exactly what he was saying. Even his thoughts were difficult to make out sometimes.

“All dead?” Miss Clark asked, terror obvious in her voice.

Harry frowned as he looked after them, trying to see if he could get anything else from their minds, maybe to see if they had any idea of who had killed whoever they’d been talking about, but before Harry could really get a hold of their minds they’d vanished through a door, probably to share their news with the rest of the staff.

“More deaths,” Louis said, his wrist finally limp where it still rested in the circle of Harry’s fingers. “And they have no idea who’s behind it.”

“How would  _ you _ know whether they have any idea or not?” As far as Harry knew, Louis didn’t possess any mindreading abilities, so he wasn’t sure what gave Louis the authority of making such a bold statement.

“Because if they had any clue, they’d make sure to take precautions. They’d get every Mutant into the Academy and not let them out again.” Louis shrugged his shoulders with a little sigh. He seemed more relaxed now, a lot less intrigued than Harry would have expected him to be at the news of more deaths. “They’re not even sure if it’s humans or Mutants yet. They have  _ no  _ idea.”

Harry hummed thoughtfully and finally let go of Louis’ wrist again, shrugging his shoulders lightly. “They’d never be able to find every mutant in the UK,” he pointed out, wagging his finger in front of Louis’ face. “Even if they were sure it was mutant attacks, there’s not much they could do.”

Somewhere in the distance a girl was screaming at her friend for pulling a prank at her by transforming into her boyfriend and breaking up with her. Harry could feel the anger and resentment through the walls, and the laughter of the friend echoed in his mind.

People were cruel.

“They’d still be doing  _ something _ ,” Louis insisted, arms crossing in front of his chest again. “Right now they’re just sitting and waiting for a hint, for someone to screw up.” He sighed and turned away, like he was getting ready to leave. His thoughts made it quite clear that he wanted to escape this conversation.   
“Where have you been, anyway?” Harry asked, eyebrows raised. It was late, and normally Louis would be in his room by now, playing FIFA or cursing the Heavens, or whatever it was he liked to do in his spare time. 

Louis just shrugged his shoulders but didn’t deem the question worthy enough of turning around again to engage in it. “Why don’t you just read my mind?” he asked, his fists obviously clenching at his sides.

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

That made Louis turn around, eyes unblinking as he looked at Harry like he was trying to figure out whether that statement had been genuine or not.

“I was out,” he answered eventually, narrowing his eyes at Harry. “Grabbing some food.”

Harry nodded, although he was quite sure that he would detect a lie if he made an effort of snooping around in Louis’ head. “Okay,” he just said, a little smile playing around his lips.

Louis looked hesitant, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with the lack of hostility in the atmosphere, but he eventually took a step closer to Harry, unclenching his fists and looking at him like he was challenging him to read his mind, like he was offering up his thoughts.

Harry didn’t need to use his powers to see the  _ ‘come into my mind’  _ flashing across Louis’ face like a neon sign. It was an offer he knew better than to accept.

“Just because you’re not snooping around in my brain doesn’t mean we’re friends,” Louis said roughly, and Harry laughed brightly at the words.

“Didn’t think so,” he answered, shaking his head. Louis didn’t seem too fond of the concept of having friends in general; Sure, he hung out with Niall, but it seemed to be more of entertainment than an actual friendship, and Harry was pretty sure that Louis and Liam were only friends because they’ve both been here so long that it was inevitable to start talking to each other sooner or later. “But maybe it could at least be a truce.”

Louis snorted and rolled his eyes. “You make it sound like we’ve been at war,” he said, but he offered his fabric clad hand to Harry anyway, a smile tugging at his lips as they shook hands like they’d just come to an official, political agreement.

“Truce,” they both said at the same time, and neither of them could contain a little laugh before they broke apart again.

“I should go,” Louis pointed out after a moment of silence, staring at his Toms shuffling on the ground. “Liam’s probably wondering where I am, and I have a bunch of early classes tomorrow.”

Harry easily nodded his understanding; Louis was too old for mandatory classes, just like Harry, but they’d learned over time that it was just as well to further their education as much as they could while they had the chance to. Human Universities wouldn’t allow any of them in if they showed just the slightest trace of abnormality, and this place offered all of them food and shelter and a chance of a happy life, even if it was a life away from mundane society. 

Maybe that was just the only way for it to be happy.

“I’ll see you around,” Harry said with a nod, his lips pressed together to stifle his smile, but his dimple gave him away anyway.

Louis shrugged his shoulders and buried his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans. He seemed like he wasn’t sure whether to wave or just nod, so Harry let out an awkward sound, somewhere between a laugh and a snort, and he lifted his own hand in a little wave.

“See you,” Louis said and stumbled a bit as he seemed to forget that his hand was still inside his pocket and tried to wave while still being restricted by the fabric. 

It was endearing, albeit almost cartoonishly silly.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed and walked a few steps backwards as he watched Louis rushing down the hallway to his and Liam’s room. “See you.”

With that Harry turned on his heels, taking a deep breath as he made his way to his own room. The hallways were almost completely empty now, save for a couple making out by their lockers, and one of the teachers cleaning up some garbage with the snap of his fingers.

“Been a long run.”   
  
Harry shrugged his shoulders at the sound of the familiar voice next to him. He’d expected it, just like he’d come to expect almost everything Niall ever chose to do.

“Needed some time to clear my mind,” he explained with a sigh and slung his arm around Niall’s shoulders. It wasn’t often that the blonde slowed down long enough for them to walk down the corridors together, but whenever it did happen Harry appreciated it greatly. 

Niall laughed and pulled a face in Harry’s general direction. “Louis’ getting under your skin?” he asked, eyebrows raised as he twirled his rubik's cube between his fingers. “He’s just being difficult. Not like he hates you, he just…”

“Doesn’t like me,” Harry finished lamely and stopped once he reached his door, giving Niall a pointed look as if to challenge him to argue.

“He doesn’t like being vulnerable.” Niall smiled and gave Harry a pat on the shoulder. “And it’s not easy to be around someone who knows what you’re thinking before you even know it yourself.”

“It’s not easy to know what everyone’s thinking all the time either,” Harry protested as he unlocked his door and opened it, leaning against the wooden doorframe. Someone had carved a heart into it, and Harry suspected Niall even if he’d never bothered to search Niall’s brain for it.

“I’m just saying don’t take it personal.” Niall scrunched up his nose as he looked past Harry into the room. “And get rid of that ugly plant.”   
Harry opened his mouth to defend his pot plant, but before he got the chance to, Niall was already gone, and by the time Harry had closed his door his friend was probably already eating leftovers in his own bed. 


	8. Chapter 8

Fridays were Louis favourite day. Only two hours of class and then field work if there was any. On this particular Friday Louis had planned to play FIFA until he fell asleep, or until Liam threw a shoe at him for lighting up the room with the TV-screen again. But after finishing the only two hours of studying he had to do at the end of the week, he was kindly reminded by his favourite blue person, Ms. Morrow, that she had set a history exam for them at the beginning of the upcoming week and that he ‘would do good in studying for this one’. So, instead of doing something he actually wanted, like beating his own goal high score, he decided to be very productive and study for the god forsaken history exam.

That was when he saw Niall, sitting by an empty table by the cafeteria. Niall and food, along with his rather good mood and a reason to postpone his history. It sounded like a winning concept until Louis saw that Niall had his headphones plugged in, feet tapping the rhythm as he balanced a pen between his fingers. A Rubik’s Cube was seated next to the open history book in front of him.

Louis sat down on the bench opposite his friend’s side of the table with a  _ thump _ and put his history book down with an equally impressive  _ thump _ . Louis saw no reason for them to make the history books so thick. It was easier to carry a small book, and it was also a lot more encouraging to read a book that you knew you’d finish rather than carry around a book that you would only finish in your wildest nightmare. He had actually heard of a girl that accidentally shrunk herself and got crushed under a massive book. Or had he dreamt that? Either way it was quite a conversation starter.

“Why are you smiling?” Niall looked up at Louis suspiciously as he flipped through the pages of his own history book in front of him on the table.

“Hello to you too,” Louis tried, already questioning his decision to sit down at Niall’s table. History wasn’t going anywhere. He could easily excuse himself to go to his room instead.

“What did you do?”

“What did  _ I _ do?” Louis frowned, placing his hand on his chest in feign offense though he was still slightly unsure of what Niall was talking about. He couldn’t remember having offended anyone recently.

“Yes, generally when someone else has done something you are all over the place about how humanity is a failed experiment that God is laughing at. But right now. I don’t know. You are  _ smiling _ .”

Louis shrugged as he opened his own book. He hadn’t realised he had been smiling. And he was pretty sure it hadn’t been an ear splitting grin. More like his mouth low key twisting upwards.

“I guess today is a good day?” Louis tried.

“So you are not in an awful mood then? Despite the exam I mean,” Niall asked, his feet tapping the rhythm of a song Louis did not know, under the table. Or maybe he did know it, he just hadn’t heard the speeded up version Niall seemed to have chosen.

“It’s only 10AM. Anything could happen.”

Smiling from ear to ear, Niall nodded in agreement.

“So I heard you talked to Harry,” he said after a while, not really looking at Louis. At least not that Louis could tell but then again Niall’s eyes probably moved at super speed so he probably snuck a glance or two to see his friend’s reaction.

“I did.” Louis stared into his book.

“And?” Niall leaned forward across the table.

“And what?” Louis said, slapping his book closed.

“Did you kiss and make up?” Shit eating grins did not suit Niall Horan.

Not replying, Louis opened his book again.

“Cause I heard - “

“I thought you had given up on those,” Louis interrupted, nodding towards the Cube.

“Nah, I like showing off too much.” Niall shrugged. He then looked to the Cube and picked it up before he reached it out to Louis for him to prepare it.

“And I am sick of you showing off,” Louis said, pushing the Cube away before returning to his book, again. Did they  _ really _ need to know about the different revolutions and their similarities when it happened over 200 years ago? What could anyone possibly ever learn from the mistakes made back then? And people were bound to make the same mistakes again. That was what history was about, people making other people’s mistakes even though they read about it to prevent them from making said mistakes. Irony.

Louis had just gotten into the consequences of past events, when they were interrupted by Mr. Briggs, their Biology teacher, clearing his throat as he came up behind them. He gave Louis a small smile and Niall a pat on the back before sitting down at their table.

“Perfect,” he said, and Louis wondered if he meant the fact that they were studying for the history exam but as the teacher continued Louis realised that that was not the case. “Just the two I have been looking for. Care to take over?”

Niall’s attention was at a maximum as Ms. Clark started talking, two of her hands holding onto a stack of papers and her other two typing away on her phone as she remained standing next to the table. The edges of her tattoo followed her arms, swirling patterns and colours blended in with the dress she was wearing. No wonder Niall looked at her like she hung the moon. “I need you two to cover a scene in Hampstead,” she said shortly, briefly looking up at the two of them before looking down at her phone again.

“ _ The _ scene in Hampstead?” Niall said, pulling the headphones off his head completely.

Nodding, Ms. Clark pocketed her phone and smiled at Niall. “I know you are up for it Niall, but I think it would be good for you to take Louis with you on this one.”

Louis knew that many of the teachers appreciated that he thought before he spoke, in most cases. Meaning he didn’t just throw out the first idea he had about a scene, but spent more time thinking it through and seeing things for what they actually were rather than jumping to conclusions because a tiny piece of the puzzle looked right. Sometimes it was hard to see the forest for the trees.

“I was -” Louis started weakly but was interrupted by Mr. Briggs.

“Unless we were disturbing your studies, we could just as well ask someone else. I heard you have an exam coming up and it would be -”

“No need! We were just done.” Niall slammed his own book shut before doing the same to Louis’. Surely Niall was done, he probably read the book twice while he and Louis talked. Louis was just past the introduction for the consequences of the dictatorships.

Thomas looked at Louis, and though he knew that his teacher only offered to get someone else to spur Louis on in accepting the field trip, he nodded. He knew that Louis was not too fond of the field trips; he liked remaining on the school grounds where people knew him and what he could do. “Can we leave now?” he asked pushing his fringe out of his eyes. As much as he avoided leaving the grounds, he was desperate to get away from  _ History Vol. 9 _ .

“Yes, we just need one of you to get the report at the headmaster’s office and then you can be on your -”

“On it!” Niall smiled from ear to ear before he disappeared with a  _ poof _ . At least that was how Louis liked to think of Niall when he rushed off. He just  _ poofed _ . 

“Guess I’ll meet you there,” Louis mumbled as he picked up his and Niall’s stuff from the table. The detour to their lockers would give Niall enough time to get to the scene.

“I will join you as soon as I finish up here today,” Mr. Briggs said. “I read that it was quite some commotion there yesterday and I doubt that the pair of you will get through all of it in one go without bumping into something that leaves your heads in knots.”

“We might just get there at the same time,” Louis shrugged as he started moving towards the lockers, Mr. Briggs following after having said goodbye to Ms. Clark. “I have heard the birdway is always shorter?”

“And I have heard that humans have issues with seeing a canary turn into a full grown man, so I think I’ll go by bus this time,” the teacher smiled back. “But I’ll see you there; I am interested in seeing what you gather from all of it.”   
  


Getting to the scene about an hour after Niall, Louis had no idea of what to gather.

“Seven kids dead. Two by drowning, two were caught over there in a fire,” Niall read off the report and pointed towards some shrubbery to their left. “One was hung in a tree and they found two kids engulfed in flowers.”

“Engulfed in flowers?” Louis asked incredulously.

“Yes, literally. They even found buds and sprouts in the kids’ lungs and ribcages during the autopsy. It was as if someone had sown the flowers in their bodies. That is what got our attention,” Niall said, reading of the report. “Apparently everything looked like coincidences until they found the boys under the flower bed. According to this, they were missing for a good twelve hours before the dogs found them. They were, uhm, almost like pulled down into the earth, the flowers growing on top of them, as if though they were supposed to be hidden. We’ve got pictures.”

Looking at the pictures confirmed the visuals that Louis had gotten from Niall’s explanation. The boys were covered in dirt and mud, there were parts of blossoms and leaves in their hair and clothes, But there were also sprouts coming out of their nostrils and ears. One of them had a flower growing from the corner of his mouth and both had their scalps scratched open by roots. They looked completely at ease, being one with the earth. 

This was without a doubt one of the weirdest scenes Louis had ever been at. He had no idea where to start. There were not too many people around and he knew that him and Niall would be able to walk around without problems. The teachers that sent them out always made sure that they had a cover, a reason to be at the scene in the first place. And once they actually got in people hardly asked any questions at all.

Niall handed Louis all the pictures in the file and then he was everywhere at once. He was looking at the square pond where the two first children apparently had been found. Louis looked at the pictures where a small girl and a slightly older boy lay next to each other on the ground. Their lips were blue and their eyes were bloodshot with small gashes by their eyes, as if though someone had nibbled on them. Their throats and wrists had bruises on them and there were a heap of algae next to them on the ground. They’d also found a dead fish next to the pond. 

Louis then moved the ‘shrubbery bubble’ as Niall called it, where two of the children had been caught and then suffocated by smoke before their parents had been able to pull them out. Looking at the pictures there was not much that hinted towards that the children would have been attacked by a mutant or something else supernatural, but while Niall was out of there quite quickly, Louis noticed that the growth of the shrubbery was very awkward. It hadn’t been growing towards the light which was coming from its left side. It had literally been growing straight up, which would have been straight into the shadows of the trees above it. Louis was not a botanist but he had learnt that plants lived of sunlight.

Niall was already done with the spot of the hung girl when Louis got there. It was a very inconspicuous tree, probably as old as the park. But looking at the picture, in which they had morbidly left the girl hanging from being unable of getting her down at first, it looked like something out of a horror movie. The branches were long and hard, they were pointed and looked like they were ready to snatch anything that came too close. The girl resembled an abandoned ragdoll on a shelf somewhere, her head hanging down in defeat, face covered by brown locks.

Niall was still at the flower bed when Louis got there. He could not believe, looking once again at the picture that had been taken as the boys were found, that they had been found at all. They were hard to make out even on the picture and then the paramedics had already pushed a large part of the flowers aside to get to the boys’ potential pulses.

“Anything special here?” Louis asked as he hunched down and picked at the flowers. They were stunning. Almost a bit like a poison dart frog. They are gorgeous and inviting, luring you into touching it but as soon as you did, you are done for. He withdrew his hand as if though he had been burned by the purple petals.

“I don’t know. Not really, apart from that seven kids died from what seems to be a forest nymph. No one will answer any of the questions and that one over there,” Niall said quickly pointing at an old lady with a notepad in her hands, “is working for  _ The Sun _ .”

Louis made a mental note to stay clear of her as he took yet another lap around the scene. He had only just finished his third lap, trying to get to notice new details when Niall called him over to the pond. 

“This a bit suspicious to you?” he asked as Louis leaned in to see what he was referring to.

There were at least ten bees on the side of the pond. 

“They probably have a nest around here?” Louis had zero knowledge of bees.

“No. Those are tawny mining bees. You are lucky to see this many together during the summer. They live alone and only between like April and July. It is mid December, Louis.”

Louis looked at Niall. Who was this person?

“I pick up a book from time to time,” Niall said moving over to the tree where the single girl had died. He poked at the stem where more bees crawled, none of them really bothered with Niall and his probing.

Louis left his friend’s side and moved back to the flower bed where the boys had been found. There were bees all over the place. How did he walk past this half a dozen times?

“Most of the time we don’t see things that we aren’t looking for, if we are looking for them,” Niall said, looking over Louis shoulder as he went through the pictures again.

Jumping slightly at the sudden close contact Louis slapped the file shut, causing a squirrel moving in a tree close to them to jump a bit sooner than planned and almost fall. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he stated before opening the file again. “There are plenty of bees in the pictures as well. They are all over the fucking place.”

“I guess that is a rather good thing to point out when we fill in the report, right?” Niall was grinning. “I s’pose we could always try and find more leads, but to be perfectly honest, I think it’s about time for lunch, no?”

Louis would have said that this was as good a lead as they would get at this point and that he too was getting a bit hungry; that he would love some lunch and maybe share the information with Liam before they handed it in because sometimes their friend really could look outside the box - or at least when he let his mind stay on one trail of thought - but Niall had already  _ poofed _ .

So Louis sat down by the pond, his feet tapping lightly on the ground as he waited for Mr. Briggs to arrive. He was very excited to see what their teacher with a considerably more experienced past would have to say about this.

It turned out, he didn’t have much more to say about it.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting but Jeffrey found a video that I think you two should take a look at,” Mr. Briggs said as he sat down next to Louis by the pond.

“Oh, Niall left. He went to get lunch,” Louis said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. His rumbling stomach gave him away. 

“Oh.”

“What was it that you found?”

“Well. As I said, Jeffrey had a look around on the internet and stumbled across this.”

Louis took the phone his teacher held out to him and pressed play on the video that was open in the current tab. It was a very shaky and at times blurry version of yesterday’s event. At first it looked like any video a parent would take of their children playing in the park. Then hell broke loose. People were running all over the place, kids were screaming and at times when the person filming looked towards the ‘shrubbery bubble’ the visual was really bad. Louis looked through the video twice before returning the phone to Mr. Briggs.

“I’m not quite sure what I should be seeing here,” Louis confessed.

Mr. Briggs replayed the video and paused at a few seconds in. “Keep your eyes on the people in the back.”

Louis pressed play again and it wasn’t until Mr. Briggs pointed them out that he saw them. There was a couple by a large tree at the outskirts of the park. They were just far away enough from the person filming to turn out blurry in the video. Throughout the video the couple remained seated. About midway the male seemed to almost be leaning back and the girl straightened up to get a better view. 

“Have we-?”

“They are too far away for us to zoom in on. It just turns into a black blob on the screen.”

“Do we think they have something to do with it?”

Mr. Briggs answer did not surprise Louis.

“Yeah. If the boys covered in flowers didn’t confirm it, this certainly did. That is why I was so late; the staff had a brief meeting and we’ve classified it as a crime by mutants.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Part 3  
The Lost**

 

The mahogany door felt hot under Zayn’s fingertips, like it was trying to burn him, chase him away with a reminder to never come back again. The brick arch kept him in the illusion of a shadow, as if though it made it difficult for neighbours to see him, when in reality every passing person gave him a shifty eyed look.

He didn’t belong in this neighbourhood, and most definitely not in front of this door.   
His fingers traced the strip of paper next to the doorbell, fine lines spelling out the name “Malik” under the clumsy drawing of a flower.   
After such a long time not knowing who or what he was, Zayn had thought that it was finally time to start a normal life, with normal people who would love him and care for him, but standing here, in front of this door, made him feel like he should have just stayed where he’d grown up. No matter how cold his room had been, no matter how relentless his lessons, no matter how cruel his supervisors, they had been familiar in a way this nice, cozy house just wasn’t.

There was a garden gnome to his left, wearing a straw hat and a toothy smile, and there were birds singing somewhere on the tree to his right, and Zayn thought that it should make him feel welcome and at ease, but instead he felt like a coward.

Every bone in his body was screaming at him to run away.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?”

Zayn flinched at the sudden sound of a stranger’s voice, and he turned around with a forced smile on his face, giving the old man a wave and a nod. That seemed to be enough to make him turn away and focus on watering the purple flowers in his garden. For being the middle of December it was incredibly sunny, and certainly much too warm.

A white Christmas was definitely out of the question.

Shaking his head, Zayn turned back to the door, swallowing heavily. He had been searching for this address for a week, had gone through too much to go into hiding now that he’d found it. So he reached his hand towards the doorbell, shivering at the cold touch of metal to his skin, and he pressed it with too much hesitation, too much fear.

The sound of a bell rang through the whole house, and Zayn could hear the voice of a young girl calling out for her mum to open the door. It momentarily made him freeze in his movements; the documents hadn’t said anything about a young girl. He had expected two women; one in her early twenties, and the other just showing slight traces of age, just a few wrinkles beside her eyes, her skin maybe a little rough with labour. He’d expected a man with dark hair and olive skin, warm eyes and a welcoming smile. Not a young girl.

Maybe he was at the wrong house afterall.

The door opened with a creak, revealing a face that Zayn only knew from pictures. She looked tired, her brown hair clearly unwashed and split at the lighter ends, her eyes glassy like she was battling a severe cold. One of her hands was clutched around a large wooden spoon, tomato sauce dripping heavily onto the tiles under her feet.

“Can I help you, love?” she asked in a thick accent that made Zayn shiver with familiarity despite never having heard it before. She looked at him with a faint smile on her thin lips, one of her thumbs fiddling with the belt loops on her tight jeans.

Somewhere in the background a girl squealed excitedly after the sound of someone stumbling and falling rang through the building. “Is daddy back?” yelled the same girl, her voice laced with laughter.

The woman at the door seemed to light up a bit and she shook her head to herself. “Not for another week, sweetie,” she yelled back to an adjoined room before turning her attention back to Zayn. “Sorry, love, what were you saying?”

“I wasn’t -”

Before Zayn could finish his sentence there were two new faces at the door. One of them Zayn recognised from pictures, the other was just as much a stranger to him as the old man next door.

The two girls peeked out from behind their mother’s back, one almost taller than her mother, her dark hair gathered in a messy ponytail, her eyes rimmed with black eyeliner, and the other just a young girl, a little chubby in the face, her hands nervously fiddling with her mother’s pink T-Shirt. 

“Who’s this?” the younger girl asked, but Zayn was too distracted by the flicker of recognition in the older girl’s face. Her lips were parted in shock, or surprise, or both, and her pupils dilated as she stepped a little closer, her hand reaching out to take his.

“Zayn?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, like they were sharing a secret. 

Zayn nodded.

Then there were arms wrapping around him, pulling him close against an unfamiliar body, holding him too tightly for him to pull away again.

“Who’s Zayn?” he heard the other girl ask, but he could see nothing but a mess of dark, shiny hair, could barely make out the shuffling of feet next to him, the tiny sobs against his shoulder.

Someone pulled the girl away from him after what felt like minutes, and Zayn immediately felt empty, like someone had left him standing in the rain, both legs broken and without crutches.

“Get away from him, Doniya,” the woman said frantically, but her oldest daughter just shook her head, eyes never leaving Zayn’s.

“I told you he’d be back,” she said, tears glimmering on her cheeks. 

“He’s  _ dead, _ ” her mother argued brokenly. She seemed to have brought the younger girl back inside where she didn’t need to deal with any of this. Inside, where she could watch cartoons and eat cookies and build cities out of lego.

“Trisha,” Zayn croaked out, his teeth nervously tugging on the dry skin of his bottom lip. The woman turned to look at him with wide eyes. “That’s your name. Trisha Malik. They told me you died twenty-one years ago.”

Doniya was beaming at him, like he was some kind of Angel, a knight in shining armour, a saviour, but her mother was shaking all over, her body trembling as she shook her head over and over and over again, as if that was going to wake her up from whatever nightmare she thought she was experiencing right now.

“No,” she said. One of her hands was clutched around Doniya’s wrist, the other still held onto the wooden spoon. The tomato sauce had already dried on the floor by now. “No, you were a baby and you died. Your lungs stopped working and I watched them take my baby boy away!”

“They raised me in a lab,” Zayn blurted out and ran a hand through his hair, untangling the strands at the back of his neck. “They gave me food and taught me what I’d have learned in a school otherwise. They ran blood tests on me every week and told me my family was dead.” He rummaged around in the dark leather bag he had draped across his left shoulder until his fingers found a few sheets of paper. “But that’s my birth certificate, and you are alive, so they must have lied to me. To both of us.”

Trisha’s hands immediately reached for the papers, her eyes glassy as she skimmed the words, her lips mouthing along with what she was reading. “How did you get these?” she asked raspily.

Zayn shrugged his shoulders. “I spent my whole life in that lab. I was bound to get curious about all those files sooner or later.” A small smile flickered across his face. “Can I come in?”

Before Trisha could say anything, Doniya had grabbed his arm and pulled him through the door. “Shoes off,” she said sternly as she watched Zayn kick off his old grey trainers. There was a hole in the front of his left shoe and she scrunched up her nose at the sight. 

Trisha closed the door behind them, still shaking as she gave Zayn’s shoulder an awkward pat. “I’ll make you some tea,” she said, so quietly that he could barely hear it.

“Thank you,” he said politely as he let himself be lead to the small, cozy living room where he sat down on a too soft sofa and leaned against too many pillows. “I appreciate it.”

It was almost half an hour later when Zayn was holding onto a hot mug and breathing in the scent of caramel tea, four pairs of eyes burning into him as he sipped on his tea. He tried not to acknowledge it, tried to act like this wasn’t one of the most uncomfortable situations he’d ever been in, by looking around the living room instead.

There were dolls all over the floor, a pair of slippers left in front of an empty fireplace. The walls were lined by bookshelves, some of them containing books in a language he didn’t understand. There was no TV, only an old radio croakily announcing the song of the day. Zayn wondered whether they just didn’t want a TV or they were actually too poor to afford one.

“This is a little much to take in,” Trisha said, finally breaking the silence. She had an arm around the youngest girl in the house, her free hand holding onto a large mug of tea for herself. 

Zayn nodded slowly and offered the young girls on the couch a little smile. “It is for me too,” he admitted as he put his mug down to fold his hands in his lap instead. “But I didn’t want to keep on with the life I had, knowing that I still had a family out there. I had to find you.”

Doniya shuffled forward on her spot on the sofa and steadied her chin on the palms of her hands. “How did you find out we’re alive?” she asked, her voice low, her face full of curiosity. 

“When I found my birth certificate and… my  _ mother’s  _ files… I tried to find the family name online. They’d never told me my last name and I’d never thought to ask. I wanted to find out what happened to my family, how they died, but…” He stopped to shrug his shoulders and take a deep breath. His eyes were caught on a stain on the right knee of his black skinny jeans. “All I found was my mother’s name on the staff list of a local primary school. I thought… If my parents are alive I need to find them.”

Trisha inhaled sharply and when Zayn looked at her he could tell that she was trying to suppress tears. “They told me my baby died,” she said shakily, barely flinching when Doniya reached over to take her mug from her trembling hands. “They’d told me all those wild stories about how a lot of babies hadn’t made it recently, they’d given me all these statistics on pollution and bacteria. We had a  _ funeral _ .”    
As she cried Zayn got off the sofa to crawl across the floor on his knees until he was able to wrap his arms around the shaking woman and rub comforting circles into her back. “I found you,” he just whispered and pressed a kiss to the side of her head. The only response he got was a loud sob.

“Wali, can you take Safaa and mummy to your room for a bit?” Doniya asked quietly and Zayn could see the other two girls sliding off the sofa, holding hands as they waited for Zayn and Trisha to let go of each other. “I think she needs a bit of rest.”   
  
As Trisha pulled back a little to wipe at the tears beneath her eyes, she gave Doniya a grateful smile and then stood up to take her youngest daughter’s hand. “I’ll only be a bit,” she said, voice still weak from crying. “I’ll have to explain to these two what is going on.” She smiled lightly as she followed the girls up a flight of stairs to where they probably had their bedrooms.

“I didn’t know she thought I was dead,” Zayn said once Trisha and the girls were out of earshot. He reached for his mug and took another sip, his eyes slowly, hesitantly locking with Doniya’s. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”

“I kept telling her you’d be back,” Doniya said, and Zayn found her to be far too calm to suit the situation.

“How did you know?” he asked, brows furrowed.

Doniya just smiled, her left shoulder twitching into a one sided shrug. “I kept dreaming about you,” she said, like that was all the explanation needed. “You, looking just like this. I saw you ringing our doorbell and sitting on our sofa, and I saw mum crying in your arms.” Her eyes lit up like she couldn’t imagine anything more amazing than Zayn’s return to his family. “I dreamed it over and over again, and I just knew… I just knew it was more than a dream. I could feel that you’d come back.”

Zayn looked at her for a long time, looked at her full lips pressing together into a little pout, her long nails tapping against her bare knees as she talked, her eyes never leaving his face. She seemed so sincere, so excited to see her dream coming true in front of her eyes, and he just didn’t have the heart to argue anything she had just revealed to him. “That’s why you knew it was me,” he just said with a nod, like he completely understood everything now.

She smiled brightly and reached out to take his hand into her smaller ones. Her skin was soft, like she had only just rubbed a sweet scented moisturiser between her palms. “Exactly,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper as she leaned in a little closer, eyes so piercing they could see straight through to Zayn’s soul. “I recognised you immediately.”

Zayn bit his lip and averted his eyes, a little bit of guilt bubbling up inside him even though he wasn’t sure where exactly it came from. “The girls,” he said slowly, nodding towards the stairs.

“Safaa and Waliyha,” Doniya said helpfully. “Wali is fifteen, and Safaa thirteen.”

“I was gone a long time,” Zayn pointed out with a little sigh and made himself a spot on the sofa next to Doniya. His eyes fell on a picture frame on one of the bookshelves. The photo showed Trisha and the girls in what seemed to be a forest; the leaves were a variety of reds and oranges, showing the start of autumn. Some of them had fallen on top of the girls’ heads, contrasting beautifully with their dark hair. They were happy and laughing at something Zayn could only imagine, and they looked like they belonged together.

They looked like a family.   
  
“Where is your father?”

“Our father,” Doniya corrected him with a patient smile as she placed a hand on his knee and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “He’s on a business trip for another week or so. He’s working crazy hours to be able to afford the rent. Mum’s job barely pays her the minimum wage.”

Zayn felt a little sting in his heart at that information. This family had to let their father leave for weeks just so they could make ends meet. “Where did he have to go?” he asked curiously and looked out of the window to feign something like disinterest. He didn’t want to seem too intrusive.

The old man across the street was still watering his flowers, and he had put on a large grey hat now to keep the sun out of his eyes. Zayn could see the sweat glistening on his forehead, and the bright smile on his face as his wife came out to bring him some water and sunscreen. 

“Istanbul,” Doniya answered. She obviously didn’t mind all those questions, no matter how much Zayn felt like he was asking for too much information. “But don’t ask me what he does there. I don’t think any of us really understand.”

Zayn couldn’t help a laugh bubbling from his chest, and it obviously pleased Doniya who smiled at him like he had just personally put every single star in the sky.

“I like your laugh,” she said and shuffled a little closer before she wrapped her arms around him and held him close until he found it in himself to hug her back, awkwardly patting her shoulder every now and again as well. 

Eventually Doniya pulled back, brushing a strand of hair that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear. “And your hugs,” she added with a little chuckle that made Zayn’s heart warm. “I like your hugs.”

“I like your family,” Zayn said quietly, eyelids fluttering shut for a while before he pried them open again to look at Doniya. His  _ sister. _

She just looked back at him, open and kind and so much more welcoming than Zayn had expected any of them to be. “Your family too,” she told him as she pulled one of her knees up against her chest. Her skirt already showed wrinkles where it was squashed between her thigh and her stomach.

Zayn shrugged, not sure what to say to that, but his lips twitched into a small smile and his eyes sparkled with glee. “I guess so,” he said and lifted his hand to rub at the back of his neck. “So do you think I could stay? Try and be part of the family?”   
Doniya laughed and shook her head as she pulled one of Zayn’s hands against her chest and pressed his knuckles against a spot where he could feel her heart beating in an almost frantic rhythm. “By all means,” she said and tilted her head down a little to press a kiss to the back of his hand. “Stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: We do not own One Direction or any aspects of the Marvel universe of X-Men, we make no profit off this work and are in no way affiliated with Sony, Syco, Simco, Universal or other companies connected to these Universes, fictional and real.
> 
> You can find us on tumblr: eatlouisout | thatissoprofound


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